Kugan – Allergic To Water

Basically, if all the bones in Kugan’s body were broken, then it was a sure case that the beating caused his death. No bones broken, so he died of a disease, What beautiful conclusion. One must congratulate the chief Dr Mohd Shah Mahmood and nine other experts some coming from far as Singapore and Saudi Arabia. They have done an excellent job and it must go on record as the best piece of investigation report ever compiled. Now, Kugan can rest in peace and his family, relatives, friends and the public who saw red can kiss the hands of the 10 people involved in this travesty not forgetting the DG of the Health Ministry, Ismail Merican. This case was blown up beyond expectations and has caused a ripple in the Police and Medical circles, and quite frankly if not for this timely report by the DG, the poor 12 chaps put to do desk jobs and the pathologist at the Serdang hospital would have been blamed unnecessarily – what an inconvenience.

Appearances can be deceptive. Merican failed to emphasise on this. After all pictures lie, now that you have so much of software, like Photoshop, to add or minus what was actual, to air-brush, contort, change the appearance of the original and so forth.

Don’t forget too, this 22 year old had problems with his heart and lungs, and the prolonged investigation was too much, and in view of the unseen weakness of these organs, which even which the deceased was not aware of took its toll. Death was caused by karma or fate. Don’t cry.

Now this committee which has brought to light the actual cause of death, did not physically examine the body, the photos were doctored, and reading between the lines and a lot of mumbo jumbo, and their experience in reading reports, saw through the two reports made earlier and brought out an interpretation worthy of praise and gratitude. Gratitude because they speak the truth.

Police detainee Kugan Ananthan had died of acute pulmonary oedema due to acute myocarditis, or acute inflammation of the heart muscle, compounded by blunt force trauma, an independent committee investigating the two post-mortem reports on him concluded.

MCPX

Health Ministry director-general Dr Mohd Ismail Merican said today Kugan was found to have a underlying acute myocarditis, while the blunt force trauma could have led to acute renal failure aggravating the acute myocarditis, resulting in acute pulmonary oedema. "Acute myocarditis is an acute inflammation of the heart muscle which may be caused by infections or toxins. It is a known cause of sudden death in young adults and gross examination of the heart appears unremarkable in up to 30 percent of the cases," he was quoted as saying by Bernama. Ismail said all body injuries noted on Kugan were insufficient, either individually or collectively, to cause death directly. "There was no evidence of injuries to the internal organs and no skeletal fractures were detected," he said. Kugan, who was detained by the police on Jan 15 for investigation for alleged car theft, died on Jan 20 while in police custody. The post-mortem done by the head of the Forensic Unit of Serdang Hospital, Dr Abdul Karim Tajuddin, concluded the cause of death as acute pulmonary oedema. Kugan’s family requested a second post-mortem, which was done by the University Malaya Medical Centre’s (UMMC) pathologist, Dr Prashant N Samberkar, who gave the provisional cause of death (pending toxicology) as acute renal failure due to rhbdomyolysis due to blunt trauma to skeletal muscles. The discrepancies between the two reports had raised some questions and this led the Health Ministry to set up a committee to investigate. As Kugan’s body was cremated after the second autopsy, the committee is believed to have made its findings based on the two conflicting post-mortem reports. UUMC doc ‘misidentified, misinterpreted’ Ismail said the committee, which was chaired by Kuala Lumpur Hospital senior consultant forensic pathologist Dr Mohd Shah Mahmood and comprising nine other local and foreign doctors including those from Singapore and Saudi Arabia, also found that both pathologists who did the post-mortems had no intention of misleading or hiding any information on the findings. However, he said, the second pathologist had misidentified and misinterpreted some of the post-mortem changes as being part of the initial injuries sustained by Kugan. He said the pathologist also misinterpreted the patterned imprint injuries on the body as ‘burn wounds’, as there was no evidence of inflammatory infiltrates or thermal injuries in the skin from the back of the deceased, which would be present in thermal injury. "It has to be emphasised that the autopsy report by Dr Prashant is a provisional report because he has not completed the autopsy as the toxicology is still pending, as stated in his report," he said. Ismail said the committee also was not able to establish how and where Kugan’s body was kept after being released to his family until it was brought to UMMC for the second post-mortem, as it would significantly affect the physical state of the body. The report would be handed over to the attorney-general tomorrow and it is up to him to take any actions needed, he said.